Last of the Leeks and Compost

Here is where all that compost went. The plot is ±20x5 meters.
It's a shame that the ground is still too wet to work it all in just yet.

Eileen, you are right, the shop-bought ones do not quite smell the same. It's such a good smell to my nose.

Droopy, I am surprised that you did not have good luck with your leeeks. How did you plant them? We have a somewhat elabourate method of planting them here...plus, I feed them throughout the summer as well.
Even small and thin ones can be used in soups and stirfries.

Palm Tree---you had the same prob as Droops. How did you plant your leeks? I am really curious about this.

Oh dear, Trudy--I wish you hadn't told how you fix them. It's got me drooling a bit.

mmmmm is right!
Glendann has already said what a lottie is, but I will just add that "lottie" is a shorteniung of the word "Allotment". It's the only english word that I know for this.
In Dutch, it's volkstuin. The lottie is a parcel of land that one rents from the local government, or as in our case, from the gardening club of which I am a member to grow flowers and veggies on.
Originally it was ment to grow exclusively veg...but that has changed now.
In Great Britain, they call folks who have an allotment--"allotmenteers".
It's great to have a place to grow things, but I have to say that the social aspect of gardening on a lottie complex is the icing on the cake, if you know what I mean.

The leeks were naturally way too much to eat on the night that they were harvested, so we simply chopped them up and froze them in to be eaten from time to time throughout the summer.

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Sjoerd http://www.volkstuindersvereniginghoornenomstreken.nl/Page11.html

Good evening CajunBelle,

Well, there's no secret really. As you must know there are umpteen different ways to make compost, and one thing that I have learned after trying several is that they all work...just that some are faster than others.

Having said that, I must say that for me there are a couple of essentials, or at least what I believe to be essential and they are:
DO'S
Chop your waste as fine as you can.
Turn the compost every 2-3 weeks.
Do not let it dry out or become waterlogged.
DONT'S
Use chlorinated water.
Add diseaded leaves or plants.
Add potato waste.
Use insecticides etc. to kill things like ants, earwigs, rolli-polli's and the like that you find inhabiting the compost bin.

The way that I do it is like this basically--
--Begin in March with an empty bin. Use a palet or a collection of thickish twigs and/or hollyhock stalks, corn stalks etc. on the very bottom to allow for aeration early on.

--Try and have a mixture of brown(dead) organic bits along with green cuttings/clippings.

--I like to use fresh grass clippings sparsely mixed through the other constituents as often as there is some available.

--I alternately use things like bone meal, blood meal, EM, fresh horse manure and manure tea applications every few weeks to keep it going.

--I use a thin layer of garden dirt in-between the layers of cuttings.

--I use a covering of old carpet or tarp most of the time...it depends upon the weather.

Compost is such an integral part of gardening in my opinion but I believe that one has to do it their own way; that is to say, to find the technique that works for for them. You just keep in mind what is going on at a micro level and know what sort of compost you want to have.

One year I used a "garden toy" (an aerator) to quantify the heat in the bin. It was a plastic staff with a purple flap on the end. This flap turned various shades of pink, depending upon the amount of heat there was in the bin. Fun, but not essential. You are also supposed to stick it in and pull it back out a few times, the flap opens-up and loosens the clippings as you withdrew it, supposedly allowing oxygen into the depths of the compost.
You can see the aerator sticking in the bin-

The lavender/purple (cold) flap-

The pink (hot) flap-

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Sjoerd http://www.volkstuindersvereniginghoornenomstreken.nl/Page11.html